SUPER ZOO DAY! apres-zoo!

pre-zoo! | zoo! | apres-zoo!

| Hello. I am the Narrator. I watch Jennifer, and tell stories of her deeds to the children in my neighbourhood. I don't know how much attention you were paying during Jennifer's story, but you may have noticed, during her time at the Zoo, something curious happened. As you will know, Jennifer is very excitable, and her mind flitters from one thing to the next as though it were an extreme sport. So, although she has boundless energy and limitless enthusiasm for whatever she is involved in, she often misses what is under her very nose. It was therefore comparatively easy for a horse to stow away in her handbag.

Any ordinary horse, and this may not have been a problem. Jennifer loves horses - her very own horse, Bingo Tits, grew to an extraordinary age, if you didn't stop counting at his death, and counted instead until the last strip of flesh fell from his rib cage. Jennifer certainly did. But then, Jennifer also threw hopeless little birthday parties for Bingo Tits in a wedding dress. The ambiguity here is deliberate. I do not want you to know who was wearing the wedding dress. Any other ordinary animal, such as the Grubby Penguin, would have been tolerable. The Grubby Penguin is the most distasteful of all creatures. It wipes its beak on the curtains and honks cheerfully in while you are on the telephone. But, the Grubby Penguin has a saving grace. It cannot live in your dreams and make you kill, and kill again. Jennifer, however, was out of luck. The horse in her handbag was the Dreamscape Pony, which could do exactly that. | The Grubby Penguin wipes its nose on its sleeve, and pretends not to hear you talking to it when it is doing the daily Crossword.

| The Dreamscape Pony, living as it does in the brains of its victim (or, as an interim measure, in a handbag, where it can survive for up to a week before its hooves shoot off), can summon imagery from its host and use it against him, or her. In the past, it has sucked darts from the mind of Eric Bristow, and fired them into his wife, leaving a confused Bristow to explain the situation to his hugely unsympathetic children. In the Dreamscape Pony's first dream, he appeared to Jennifer in her own dress. Jennifer believes very firmly that how she looks is a direct reflection of how she feels. So it was addling for her to see her favourite dress being worn by a Pony. "Don't worry," lied the Pony. "I only want to wear it for a while. I am going to throw glass at James Belushi." Jennifer had thrown a glass at James Belushi when she was six, and in return, he had punched her in the mouth. As a result, she had developed a profound fear of throwing glass at James Belushi. She couldn't help but think the Pony knew this, and that he was laughing at her. If there are three things that Jennifer hates, it is people who are boring, people who are smelly, and smug Ponies wearing her favourite dress and laughing at her deepest fears.

In the Pony's second dream, he appeared with two ladies. The ladies were beautiful, and they laughed uproariously at the very clever jokes that the horse was making. Then, although they didn't know him very well, they invited him to a sophisticated party. They knocked on the door of an opulent mansion, and Jennifer's best friend, Sandy, invited them in. Party streamers hung from her stylish bouffant, and she gasped admiringly at the Pony. "Oh, Bungo Tots," she said. "You are the finest horse in the world!" Jennifer knew this wasn't true, as the skeleton of the finest horse in the world still rests in a field in Kent, a muddy wedding veil wrapped tenderly around his skull. Besides, Bungo Tots, as he called himself, was a Pony. Nothing more than a stupid Pony. Jennifer wanted to say something, but in the dream there was a sleeping snake in her mouth, and she didn't want to wake it up. | "Oh, Bungo Tots! Your sense of timing is impeccable!" "Is that the C64 game 'The Saga of Erik the Viking' above your head, you adorably retro creature?"

| By now, Jennifer was confused, tired, and angry. If you have ever missed a night's sleep, because a ghostly pianola was playing rag music all night at the foot of your bed, and when you complain to the Pianola hotline, they put you on hold, and the hold music is Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode, then you will know how Jennifer felt. Her spirits lifted, however, when her old friend returned to her. The duck that she had enticed into her jacket and released into the wild turned up on her doorstep, with a little sticker that read "Spain" on his beak. Jennifer was overjoyed. Although he had picked up a little accent, he was still the little duck that - one year ago to the day - had closed one eye and looked around the room, got dizzy, opened his eye again, and been surprised by a spoonful of whisky that Jennifer had suddenly placed there. The duck waddled over to the CD rack, picked up a copy of the U2 album Rattle and Hum, and walked rudely out of the door, making a little quack that seemed to mean "I'll be back for Zooropa". Already in something of a trough, Jennifer felt sadder and more alone than she had ever done in her life. So she watched television for three hours and laughed at everything, even A Touch of Frost. Feeling a little better, she hatched a plan.

When you are asleep, you generally do not know what you will dream about. Some people can control their dreams, but you will never meet these people because they are always asleep, dreaming of a prism that defracts rainbows into their hair. The rest of us can control our dreams a little. For example, if you spent the whole day forcing coins into a swan's mouth, the chances are that you would dream about coins, or swans. Or, if you have a finely tuned sense of justice, a giant swan forcing coins into your mouth, and the mouths of those you love. So anyone can control their dreams a little, if they are willing to spend a dreary day doing the same thing over and over again. Fortunately, Jennifer is especially good at mindless repetition, because she can smile and turn off her brain at a second's notice. Jennifer spent all day staring into a picture of Bingo Tits, the real best horse in the world. She imagined herself atop Bingo Tits, hurling scythes into the air like macabre yo-yos. And when she fell asleep, nine hours later, she took this image with her.

Sensing a challenge to his mastery of the subconscious, the Dreamscape Pony stopped calling himself Bungo Tots, which is a fatuous and unthreatening name, and threw his real name into Jennifer's mind. Steve Freeman. Jennifer, however, was riding Bingo Tits, the horse she had combed, even when the comb sank disturbingly into the flesh, and the smell of carrion was thick in her mouth. She was invincible. None of Steve Freeman's weaponry - a metaphorical gun that could fire over 30 analogies a second, and a plastic beaker full of distilled regret - none of these things could penetrate Jennifer's steelened resolve. When Jennifer has made her mind up, she is something of a stubborn cow. Steve's skin began to bubble and pop, and he began to spin off towards the sleeping Jennifer 's ear. When Jennifer awoke, she found a tiny handbag sized pony on her floor, his little hooves having shot off some minutes ago. He was quite dead. Jennifer was safe at last from the wiles of Steve Freeman. It would be her own collection of neuroses and unexpressable anger that would eventually lead to her career as a serial killer. But that, dear readers, is another story. |